How Fossil Fuel Funding Impacts Learning At Colleges & Universities – CleanTechnica

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In a peer reviewed research study published on September 5, 2024, researchers claim funding by the fossil fuel industry provided to colleges and universities is delaying the transition to a low carbon future. For the study, six researchers pored over thousands of academic articles from the past two decades and found just a handful of them focused on oil and gas companies. This shows a “worrying lack of attention” to the issue, the analysis told The Guardian.

Here is the abstract to that study:

“The evolution of fossil fuel industry tactics for obstructing climate action, from outright denial of climate change to more subtle techniques of delay, is under growing scrutiny. One key site of ongoing climate obstructionism identified by researchers, journalists, and advocates is higher education. Scholars have exhaustively documented how industry-sponsored academic research tends to bias scholarship in favor of tobacco, pharmaceutical, food, sugar, lead, and other industries, but the contemporary influence of fossil fuel interests on higher education has received relatively little academic attention.

“We report the first literature review of academic and civil society investigations into fossil fuel industry ties to higher education in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. We find that universities are an established yet under-researched vehicle of climate obstruction by the fossil fuel industry, and that universities’ lack of transparency about their partnerships with this industry poses a challenge to empirical research. We propose a research agenda of topical and methodological directions for future analyses of the prevalence and consequences of fossil fuel industry–university partnerships, and responses to them.”

The authors report that the “fossil fuel industry is significantly intertwined with higher education around the world. Fossil fuel companies and their affiliated foundations fund climate and energy research, host student-recruitment events at campuses, sit on university governance boards, and more. Such ties have been observed as early as the 1920s and the “corporatization” of higher education since the 1980s has further incentivized industry–university collaborations. Yet only in the last few years have scholars, journalists, civil-society organizations, and university faculty and students spotlighted the pervasiveness of partnerships between fossil fuel companies and higher education institutions.”

Three Questions About Fossil Fuel & Education

The study asks, “Why should scholars investigate the proliferation of fossil fuel industry ties to higher education?” The researchers suggest three answers:

“First, prior research shows that industry-sponsorship creates conflicts of interest that historically have biased research in favor of numerous industries, including tobacco, pharmaceutical, junk food, sugar, and lead. For example, a systematic review of pharmaceutical industry sponsored studies found them more favorable toward the sponsor’s product than non-industry sponsored studies. Academic partnerships benefit industry in additional ways, such as providing opportunities for student recruitment, affording some control over research agendas and publications, and legitimizing the industry among academics, policymakers, and the public.

“Second, archival documents show that the fossil fuel industry deliberately uses university partnerships to further its own interests. A 1978 manual for industries facing regulation advised “co-opting” academics and “identifying the leading experts in each relevant field and hiring them as consultants or advisors, or giving them research grants and the like…it must not be too blatant, for the experts themselves must not recognize that they have lost their objectivity. A leaked 1998 internal strategy memo from the American Petroleum Institute focused on building “a case against precipitous action on climate change.” It advised establishing “cooperative relationships with all major scientists whose research in this field supports our position,” and organizing “campus/community workshops/debates on climate science.”

“More recently, an internal 2017 campaign strategy memo presented by a public relations firm to BP proposed targeting Princeton University as a “partner” helpful in “authenticating BP’s commitment to low carbon” while the company’s latest projections show their commitment to growing fossil fuel production. Similarly, scholars have documented how fossil fuel interests have deliberately targeted K-12 education in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada since at least the 1940s.

“These documents suggest that higher education is an established and evolving site of organized climate obstructionism by the fossil fuel industry. While scholars have shown how fossil fuel interests have employed public relations firms, lobbyists, front groups, and other actors to obstruct climate action, there is a dearth of research into the industry’s relationship with higher education.

“Third, research on fossil fuel–university ties contributes to a broader literature on “critical university studies” This literature, which examines the impacts of declining public funding for research and education since the 1970s and the concomitant corporatization of Western universities, suggests that these trends have increased universities’ focus on private-sector partnerships and on technological innovation useful to industry.

“These trends are particularly troubling given the central role of universities in tackling complex societal challenges through research, teaching, and advocacy. The increasing impacts of climate change on society have led several scholars to emphasize the untapped potential of higher education, not only to further understand the causes and consequences of the crisis, but also to model and contribute to a just transition to a more healthy, climate-stable, and equitable future. The fossil fuel industry’s apparent strategic effort to influence higher education thus threatens to distort climate knowledge and action and also compromises universities’ supposed objective and unbiased role.”

Fossil Fuel Funded Research

“The science has been telling us that fossil fuel phase-out is the No 1 thing that we need to focus on, but within our universities, there’s very little research on how to do fossil fuel phase-out,” Jennie Stephens, a climate justice professor at Maynooth University in Ireland and co-author of the study, told The Guardian. “This provides some explanation for why society has been so ineffective and inadequate in our responses to the climate crisis.”

Fossil fuel companies’ relationships with universities can create the potential for bias in research and real or perceived conflicts of interest, the authors write. “Our intention is to protect scientific integrity,” said Geoffrey Supran, a University of Miami associate professor who studies fossil fuel industry messaging and co-authored the study. “We want to warn scholars and university leaders that they can be pawns in a propaganda scheme.”

BP, for instance, funneled as much as $2.6 million to Princeton University’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative between 2012 and 2017. The initiative produced research on ways to decarbonize the economy. “It’s noteworthy of that the scenarios for decarbonization that the initiative outlined, only one of them didn’t include a serious role to be played by fossil fuels paired with negative emissions technologies,” said Supran. The study highlights an internal 2017 campaign strategy memo presented by a public relations firm to BP that proposed targeting Princeton as a “partner” that could help authenticate “BP’s commitment to low carbon” despite its commitment to expanding planet-heating fossil fuel production.

An influential 2011 study from the MIT Energy Initiative called methane gas “a bridge to a low carbon future” even though it is a planet-heating fossil fuel. Several of the study’s authors had financial ties to, and funding from, major oil and gas companies. “The report helped to situate natural gas, or fossil gas, as part of the climate solution,” said Stephens. “And it seemed to reinforce the Obama administration’s all of the above strategy.” A spokesperson for the MIT Energy Initiative said funders “have no control” over the institute’s reports, “no approval or rejection, no opportunity to accept or reject any findings. He added that the study in question was “developed and vigorously debated by a multidisciplinary team.”

In an earlier example, the study notes that in 1997, Exxon paid a Harvard Law School professor to write about “why punitive damages awards are inappropriate in today’s civil justice system” as the company was appealing a $5 billion punitive damages award following a major oil tanker spill in Alaska.

A spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute told The Guardian, “America’s oil and natural gas industry will continue to work with experts and organizations committed to advancing solutions that tackle climate change, meet growing demand and ensure continued access to affordable, reliable American energy.” BP, Exxon, Princeton, and Harvard were not immediately available for comment.

There is some evidence that funding from oil and gas companies is associated with a more positive view of fossil fuels, the study notes. Relationships with fossil fuels companies can also affect internal campus decision-making, the authors argue. Universities that are dependent on fossil fuel funding may be less likely to divest their endowments from the sector, said Supran.

Despite the authors’ efforts, the scope of fossil fuel funding on campus remains unclear because the vast majority of university research centers do not disclose their donors publicly. One 2023 report from the non-profit Data for Progress found that fossil fuel companies donated at least $700 million to 27 US universities over the past decade, but the authors noted this was almost certainly an undercount. Universities have sometimes pushed back on calls for transparency. Years ago, one of the new study’s co-authors, Emily Eaton, requested that her university in Canada disclose its fossil fuel funders. When it refused to do so, she sued, and in 2021 a judge ruled in her favor.

The report comes amid increasing public scrutiny of the oil sector’s relationship with universities, including in an April report from Democrats in the US Congress. Efforts to push academic institutions to “dissociate” from fossil fuel companies are also ramping up on campuses across the country. “This literature review confirms what students in our movement have known for years,” said Jake Lowe, executive director of Campus Climate Network, which is pressuring schools to sever ties with the industry. “Big oil has infiltrated academia in order to gain undue credibility and obstruct climate action.” To avert these conflicts in the future, Stephens said governments should provide more public funding to universities. “More public funding could help them act in the public good,” she said.

The Takeaway

Money is the root of all evil, some say. The job of any college or university president is to raise money. They are not hired because of their academic accomplishments, but because of their ability to find donors. The cost of tuition may be stratospheric at many colleges and universities today, but tuition alone does not cover more than a fraction of the cost of running an institution of higher learning. It doesn’t build science labs, dormitories, libraries, and classrooms.

In a sense, colleges and universities have allowed themselves to be hijacked by whoever wants to shovel some money their way, just as have politicians. Thanks largely to the infamous — and wrongheaded — Citizens United decision, all we hear about today is which candidate has raised the most money. The drumbeat of campaign finance news is similar to the obsession with “body count” numbers during the Vietnam War.

There are things that are valuable but are hard to put a price tag on, things like academic freedom, democracy, and an environment that continues to support human life. As Al Gore reminded us, things that have no monetary value are assumed to have no value — a dangerous misconception. A society that values money over everything else opens the door to anyone with money dominating every conversation. We need to ask ourselves if there are not other ways to manage our society that de-emphasize the influence of money and elevate the influence of non-monetary factors. A Utopian plan admittedly, but one that deserves some consideration precisely because it implies an appeal to our better natures.

Is it possible that money from fossil fuel companies has no impact on the quality or quantity of climate research? Tell us what you think about that in the comments section.